The Remarkable Flight of Marnie McPhee by Daniel Karasik

Shoot the Puck
    After reading the first draft of The Remarkable Flight of Marnie McPhee, I knew Daniel had captured something special. The play was busting at the seams with Marnie's voice and I was completely taken by it. The yearning these four characters felt for things they believed lost, forgotten, or unattainable was as palpable as Marnie's sometimes-aware, sometimes-unaware wit. The play was screaming to be shared with an audience.
    I also had no idea how to do it. Carousel Players is, at its heart, a touring company. While we do present our work in theatres, 95% of our performances take place in school gyms. By going into schools, we reach all different kinds of children regardless of their backgrounds or socio-economic status. We perform ten times a week under varying acoustic and lighting conditions; our sets need to be assembled by four actors and the stage manager in fifty minutes or less and taken down in twenty. Realizing the bold and lyrical ending in The Remarkable Flight of Marnie McPhee was going to be a real test of resourcefulness and imagination. Ultimately, I knew that a good creative team would sink its teeth into the challenge (and by the way, the designers, production team,, and touring cast really did rise to the occasion on this one), so I invited Daniel to one of the shows we had on the road. I wanted him to have a sense of the environment in which we perform our plays. What happened that day is something I still refer to in all of my work.
    We were touring a hockey-themed play. At the climax, the protagonist is about to score a crucial goal, but he steps out of the action and tells us what is going through his head. That day, the actor took a short pause before speaking. Suddenly, two hundred eight-to-twelve-year-olds were screaming "Shoot the puck!" They had gotten ahead of him; the play had moved on. "Shoot the puck" is the phrase we now use whenever we suspect the audience may be getting ahead of us.
    The beauty of Marnie is that the audience never has the chance to get ahead of its young hero. She bridges all of those thoughts and changes so quickly that we need to be on our toes to keep up with her. Her decisions and discoveries drive the action forward relentlessly, setting her up for that moment in space when she finally realizes that— Well, you will have to read the play to find out. But I will say that the truly remarkable thing Daniel has accomplished in his play is that, amid Marnie's breakneck pace, he affords us the time to listen to each other breathe. Those moments of filled silence in fluorescent-lit gyms are truly magical. There is more than one way to shoot the puck.
    â€”Pablo Felices-Luna, Artistic Director, Carousel Players

The Remarkable Flight of Marnie McPhee was first produced by Carousel Players on January 27, 2011, at the Sullivan Mahoney Courthouse Theatre in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. The creative team was:
    Marnie: Sarah English
    Mom: Andrea Scott
    Dad: Graeme Somerville
    Alan: Colin Doyle
    Director: Pablo Felices-Luna
    Set and costume design: Michael Greves
    Lighting and sound design: Gavin Fearon
    Stage manager: Kevin Olson
    The play was subsequently produced as Marnie fliegt, translated into German by Barbara Christ and directed by Kerstin Kusch, at the Hans Otto Theater in Potsdam, Germany, as part of the theatre's 2012/2013 repertory season.

Characters
    Marnie McPhee, would-be astronaut, nine
    Mom, her mom
    Dad, her dad
    Alan, her brother

Notes
    An ellipsis (…) appearing on its own or before a line of dialogue indicates a silent, momentary response to what has just been said or not said.
    The reference to "Mississauga" in the play's last scene can be replaced with the name of an outlying suburb near you.
    If/when the references to Hilary Duff, Tom Cruise, and Celine Dion become dated, they can be replaced with the names of more of-the-moment celebrities. Same goes for the allusion to Spider-Man 3. The joke built into the Celine Dion reference